Inori
by Trialia
Summary: AU, Revolutions and after. Deus Ex Machina agrees to a little more than peace, and Neo and Trinity are left to find their way to the future together. INCOMPLETE
1. Calvary

**Title:** _**Inori**_ ('Prayer')  
  
**Summary:** AU, Revolutions and its aftermath. Deus Ex Machina agrees to a little more than peace, and Neo and Trinity find their own path to the future.  
  
**Category:** Drama, Angst, Romance and AU  
  
**Rating:** currently PG-13 (based on the fact that the Matrix films are R. It _will_ go up.)   
  
A/N: There will be more to this. It's un-betaed though, and I could do with some feedback. Please let me know what you think and if there's anything I could do better with! 

***

  
__

'Take my revolution. Let's go on with our lives...'  
--- Okui Masami, _Rinbu Revolution_ (_Shoujo Kakumei Utena_)

"Pump the igniter, the ship will start. Again - slowly! _Now_!" Neo's voice was commanding, desperate. He couldn't really see what was happening but it didn't worry him; he could see the lights of 01, the glowing machines all around them. He could feel it when they started to fall.

Suddenly a premonition of additional danger flashed through his mind as he felt Trinity's hand pulled from his grasp. Immediately, almost subconsciously, he reached out and yanked his lover out of her seat, pulling her to him and clasping her tightly in his arms, ignoring her gasp of surprise. It didn't matter, now, that she couldn't navigate. The _Logos_ was beyond steering.

Trinity shouted above the grinding as the hovercraft started to crash, a wordless cry of frustration and anger. The entwined soldiers both cried out as the _Logos_ hit the ground; Neo's a low groan of pain from the force of their landing, Trinity's a high-pitched, dangerously painful-sounding scream.

For a moment everything was still. Silence reigned inside the tiny vehicle for a brief time, before the lights faded and Trinity's vision began to return. Neo's real-world vision, since the terrible fight with Bane, never would.

Twisted metal was everywhere. Sliding her left hand, almost numb with cold and pain, down her back, Trinity could feel the sticky trickle of blood and shards of metal that had hit her. It hurt.

"Neo, are you all right?" _I'm worried about you. Talk to me._ Her head was pressed into his shoulder where he'd held her close during the last part of their flight, and she lifted her face to look into his.

She couldn't read the expression on his face. Awed, petrified, painful. Mixed feelings shot through her as he wrapped an arm more gently around her, inhaling deeply.

"God, can you see this?"

The tone of awed amazement confused Trinity for a moment, and she looked over her shoulder to see the huge expanse of 01 in front of them, metal glinting dully in the rain. Pausing, she realised that he couldn't have been talking about what she could see: that would not have had this effect on him. Slowly, she turned her face to him, questioning.

"What is it? What do you see?"

Easing himself up, with her on his lap, Neo murmured, "Light. Light everywhere. It's like the whole thing was built with light. I wish you could see what I see."

__

I wish I could, too, she inwardly sighed. Trinity turned again, roughly shoving a fallen rebar away and slipping off his lap to stand up. She winced as she did so, biting her lip hard at the sudden reminder of pain. Looking down, she saw what she'd already suspected: her leg was bleeding. Her trousers were torn and the scarlet trickle of blood down her calf was just barely visible in the dim light of the fallen _Logos_. With a grimace, she stepped back to let Neo get up. As he did, she looked over at the pilot's seat where she had been sitting and her eyes widened.

Stumbling, almost falling to her knees, Trinity retched violently, reaction for once overriding control. Where she would have landed if Neo hadn't grabbed ahold of her, iron rebars punctured her seat, and as clearly as if she had seen an alternate future, she could picture what would have happened. She closed her eyes tightly, wiping her mouth on her sleeve.

"Trinity?"

Neo sounded worried, and with good reason. She had forgotten that he couldn't see what she could, just like she couldn't see all the light in his strange non-vision.

"I'm fine," she told him, her lips still trembling. "Neo, my seat... if you hadn't..." She didn't need to finish the sentence, as he made his way cautiously toward the source of her voice with a slight nod.

"I know, Trin."

She didn't want to ask how he'd known, and he couldn't have told her if she had, because he didn't know. All that mattered now was getting to the leader of the machines before Zion fell completely. She took his hand and led him out into the percussion of the falling rain.

***

"I only ask to say what I've come to say. After that, do what you want and I won't stop you." 

Trinity shivered in the rain, standing close behind her lover as he spoke. A montage of sentinels and other machines combined to form the image of a face, that moved as the grating sound of the creature's voice was heard.

"Speak," it boomed; the voice of eternity. 

Neo was quietly confident, serious, despite his loss of the assurance that would have come with being able to see to what he spoke.

"The program Smith has grown beyond your control. Soon he will spread through this city as he spread through the Matrix." _No doubt of that,_ Trinity thought, taking a deep breath and holding it as rivulets of raindrops washed the blood and grime of their flight from her cheeks.

"You cannot stop him," Neo told the face, "but I can." He sounded definite, so sure, and for a moment her confidence flared. But she could not smile, not even nervously, her jaw clenched tight. Not now, not here, and not in this position. If the machine did not accept what Neo had to say, all the people she had known would die, herself and Neo with them, but so far from Zion. She didn't even want to think about it.

The face roared, and Trinity instinctively dropped to a crouch behind Neo as the sentinels forming the face hurled themselves at and around them. She wanted to pull him down with her, to protect him, but she knew that she couldn't. _Not now._

"_We_ don't need _you_! We need _nothing_!" Great, terrible anger, but Neo didn't even flinch, and she wondered at that. _Even machines can get angry._

What is he thinking? For once, Trinity could not share in the thoughts of the man who made her whole, and she didn't understand what he was asking.

"If that's true, then I've made a mistake and you should kill me now." _Oh, please, no...don't..._ She was praying silently, gazing over his shoulder after having risen to her feet when the flood of sentinels ceased.

"What do you want?" the machina visage demanded, echoing Trinity's silent question.

"Peace."

***

"And if you fail?"

"I won't." Steadily, evenly, with surpassing confidence that reminded Trinity of a time while they'd been watching him before he'd been unplugged. _My own personal Jesus Christ,_ Choi had called him, and now he was becoming the deity, the legend. _The One._

Neo turned and pulled her fiercely close, whispering softly, "I love you." Then he kissed her, a deep, furious touch that lasted a moment - felt like a lifetime - before turning and stepping toward Deus Ex Machina as thousands of machines reached to support him, to plug him into the Matrix.

"I'm ready."

***

Trinity couldn't think, couldn't move, could do nothing. All she could do was watch the prone body of her beloved as Neo jerked and twisted in the grip of that world-within-a-world.

For an age, she stared, her ice-blue eyes intense and her body more rigid than his. He lay in a crucifix shape, but she didn't even notice. Her gaze was too glued to his face.

Every unnatural shudder wrenched her heart, but she couldn't move, riveted to the grid, picturing the way he would be being hurled and tossed around in the Matrix - like a rag doll, but he was far from weak. This was the hardest fight of his life, and she could do nothing to jeopardise the outcome. _Nothing._

I can't protect him now.

***

Dizzy and light-headed from the blood loss she was still suffering, Trinity lost all sense of time. Forced to blink continually now against the rain, sitting cross-legged, she was the only conscious human in 01, and not even that.

Suddenly the machines behind her began to grind into a face again, and she struggled to her feet to look up at it.

The voice resounded through the city.

"It is done."


	2. Dealing the Cards

****

Chapter 2: Dealing the Cards

'_Anata no sugu soba ni dare mo inai kara..._'

  
--- '_Hikari no Naka e_', Ohki Risa / Uematsu Nobuo

Semi-conscious, Trinity stumbled to Neo's side. He was still, unmoving, but when she checked his pulse at his neck there was a faint flicker. She couldn't be sure if she'd imagined it, so she leaned over his open mouth to try and find out if he was breathing. _Please don't be dead, Neo, please..._

He wasn't. Light breaths hissed against her ear, so light that his chest hardly moved because of them, but the breath was there. He was still alive - barely.

Trinity, awakened by that fact from her dreamlike state to something more like her usual self, twisted around. The rain had slowed, and the machina face was staring at them. She looked it straight in what could be called its eyes. Eye sockets, if nothing else.

"What's happened to him?" she asked, directly addressing the leader of the machines without fear for herself.

"His residual self-image is comatose. We cannot bring him back."

Trinity's heart sank into the floor. "Is there nothing I can do?"

"Why do you ask?" The machina sounded almost curious, but maybe that was just her imagination.

Trinity didn't hesitate. "I love him."

Deus Ex Machina was silent for a moment, and Trinity took the opportunity to glance down at Neo's blank face, fear for him wringing her heart.

She turned back just in time to see the machine's reply formed. "If you are plugged into the Matrix and are able to revive his residual self-image sufficiently to reach an exit, you can bring him back. You would have to be plugged into the mainframe of our system and would risk mental overload, which would kill you. You are prepared to do such a thing?"

Trinity bit her lip. _Don't you think I would do_ anything_?_ Without a moment's pause, she nodded her head, slowly, still disoriented and nauseous, but ready to do anything to get her lover back.

"You are injured. Medical aid must be summoned and you must rest before allowing yourself to be plugged into the mainframe or you will certainly die."

Trinity was vaguely confused by the speech, but she couldn't trace exactly why, so she just nodded again, placing a hand on the grid to support herself as another wave of nausea swept over her. "All right," she forced out, in a near-whisper.

Why am I so dizzy? She didn't know. Couldn't understand. _Everything is... swaying..._ It was as if the world around her was one incredible blur, slow movement. Darkness swept over her heavy mind all in a moment, and a sudden throb of pain in her head was the last thing the woman remembered before slumping down, unconscious.

***

Everything was red. _My eyes are still closed,_ Trinity thought slowly, automatically trying to open them. Immediately she squinted her eyes almost shut against the furiously bright lights that assaulted her from the edge of her vision. _Where the hell am I? Where's Neo?_ Then she remembered, and her breath caught soundlessly in her throat. _Shit._

Several things were beginning to dawn on Trinity's tentative consciousness - the absence of the pain in her left leg, the sound of metal clanking dully against metal, the whiteness of the light that intruded itself nearly through her eyelids, and the surface beneath her. _So I'm lying on my stomach...on something metal. Hm. Well, it's a start._

"She's awake," an unfamiliar, thickly-accented voice announced. Trinity felt a cold hand touch her shoulder, and slowly, carefully, she opened her eyes again, still blinking against the light. She could see shapes moving, and remembering where she was, she lifted her head.

"Easy, now," the owner of the voice said - a woman who looked almost human.

Trinity shook her head to clear out the remaining cobwebs in her mind. "Where is he?"

"The blind human is right where you left him," the woman said, removing her hand from Trinity's arm. "You fainted, so we fixed you up while you were out. You should be good to go. I am K-192370," she introduced herself calmly.

"Trinity," Trinity replied, betraying none of her surprise at how _human_ K-192370 seemed. Shifting, she turned onto her back and sat up carefully, sliding around on the wall-set shelf to face the machine woman as she ran her hands over herself, checking for injuries. Everything seemed fine, save for the tears in her clothing. "I have to go," she stated. "Neo needs my help."

"Yes, indeed," K-192370 affirmed. "Deus Ex has told me to monitor you whilst you are in the Matrix and to set up the exit. Get inside, get the human man, and get out."

"Deus Ex?" Trinity asked curiously.

K-192370 bowed her head slightly in veneration, "Our leader, Deus Ex Machina."

Oh, so that's_ what it's called._

Trinity could contain her question no longer. "How is it that you are so amenable to humans in your city after all these years?" she inquired, her brow furrowed.

"Your man ended the war. He saved this city from certain destruction. We are grateful," the being said simply. "Our gratitude is such that we are willing to aid you in saving his life." She turned away, looking at a silent companion who stood at the other side of the room. "After he is unplugged, you must both return to the human city. We will provide transport. Deus Ex Machina wishes yourself and the man to become ambassadors for the human race."

Trinity was stunned. _Ambassadors?_ That must mean the machines wanted to co-operate. _But why?_ She had little more time to think about it, as a red light clicked on in the steel wall.

"We are summoned," K-192370 told her. "Come, I must lead you to the platform."

Trinity needed no telling, already on her feet and ready to follow the machine woman out of the room they were in as soon as she moved.

***

"Are you ready?"

Trinity looked K-192370 straight in the eye. "Yes," she said steadily, lying down next to Neo's motionless body.

"Good luck."

The steel plug grated against the inside of Trinity's plug as K-192370 slid it into her brain, and she felt the swift, cold rush of transfer against her skin as she entered the Matrix.

* * *

Not the longest chapter in the world, but it fits where I am with this story so far. I hope y'all liked it :) I seem to have junkies for this one already! I'm not going to be rewriting lots of this the way I will be with TBOA.

To my reviewers: Thanks to all of you! To answer two questions in one, _inori_ is Japanese for 'prayer'. Yes, there is definitely going to be more of this fic. Very inspired at the moment. And a question I'm sure will be asked - what does the quote at the top of this chapter mean? 'Because you have no-one by your side.' The song title is 'Into the Light' and it's from 'Final Fantasy: Pray'. I'm a quotation wh0re, what can I say. ;)

Hope you liked it. Next chapter will be up soonish.

****

Trialia


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